Challenges and new horizons on gender inequalities in research are raised at the annual meeting in Malta

The University of Malta’s Valletta Campus hosted the 2nd annual meeting of the COST ACTION VOICES Making Young Researchers’ Voices Heard for Gender Equality on 14-15 February 2023. The conference focused on the theme Making Young Researchers’ Voices Heard for Europe’s Future: Trends, Challenges and Policies, with an intense programme over 2 days of conference and one day of working groups. The annual meeting was attended by more than 50 people who participated in the presentations, round tables and working groups. You can see the full programme here.

The conference was attended by leading members of the European Union. President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, gave a welcome message to the attendees and VOICES members at the conference in Malta. Also, Ronald Bruin, COST programme Director, participated in the opening of the conference giving some data on the incorporation of young researchers to Action VOICES, becoming a good example of COST Action integrating Young Researchers and Innovators.

Helena Dalli, participated in the VOICES Annual Meeting with a message in which she highlights the importance of working against gender violence in academia and continuing research from a gender perspective to combat inequalities. 

 

There were also very interesting plenary lectures. There were also very interesting plenary lectures. The keynote speaker, Dr Jolanta Reingarde from EIGE, referred in her lecture to the importance of having good indicators to measure gender inequalities and having the capacity to act on public policies to change them. However, she stressed that at the current rate, gender equality would be achieved in the European Union in 68 years, which shows the slow pace of public policies for equality.

Keynote speaker, Camel Borg, professor at the University of Malta,  gave the lecture on “Interrogating the Self: Intersectionality and social transgression as an academic possibility”. In the lecture, the professor asked the audience challenging questions such as: What is your definition of academic success? Who do we choose to serve from our position as academics?

The meeting served to strengthen stakeholder relations through the intergenerational roundtable with stakeholders on the theme “Supporting the development of sustainable research careers”.

The event was streamed on Twitter (here you can see the hashtag threads #VoicesAnnualMeeting23) and the Instagram account was also launched.